Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy: An Analysis of the Criminal Justice Policy Agenda in Britain

How and when issues are elevated onto the political agenda is a perennial question in the study of public policy. This article considers how moral panics contribute to punctuated equilibrium in public policy by drawing together broader societal anxieties or fears and thereby precipitating or accelerating changes in the dominant set of issue frames. In so doing they create opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to disrupt the existing policy consensus. In a test of this theory, we assess the factors behind the rise of crime on the policy agenda in Britain between 1960 and 2010. We adopt an integrative mixed-methods approach, drawing upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. This enables us to analyze the rise of crime as a policy problem, the breakdown of the political-institutional consensus on crime, the moral panic that followed the murder of the toddler James Bulger in 1993, the emergence of new issue frames around crime and social/moral decay more broadly, and how—in combination—these contributed to an escalation of political rhetoric and action on crime, led by policy entrepreneurs in the Labour and Conservative parties.     

Torres Strait elections, 2000 and 2004: Changes in political leadership and style?

Torres Strait has 18 local governments, elections for which were held in March of both 2000 and 2004 in conjunction with other local government elections in Queensland. Elections were also held at these times for additional positions on two regional representative bodies for Torres Strait, the Island Co-ordinating Council and the Torres Strait Regional Authority. This paper examines all these elections, focusing on changes in political leadership and also a possible emerging change in political style in Torres Strait.     

The Green Frog and Desalination: A Nyungar Metaphor for the (Mis‐)Management of Water Resources,Swan Coastal Plain,Western Australia

ABSTRACT In common with Aboriginal groups around Australia, the indigenous people, or Nyungars, of Perth adopt a holistic attitude towards groundwater resources. Of cultural significance are lakes, springs, soaks and watercourses that feature in Dreamtime creation narratives. Perth is experiencing major water shortages and many Nyungars feel that the degradation of the freshwater supply is a result of mismanagement and unsustainable development by non‐Aboriginal people. Proposals for dealing with the issue are seen as equally out of balance with the natural order of things. Water regulators have much to learn from indigenous Australians about water and environmental management. Although water continues to be central to Nyungar identity, the study on which this article is based found evidence of attenuated knowledge about the Dreaming, with discontinuities evident in the way significance is increasingly being read in everyplace rather than in specific ‘story places’.     

The Role of Different Raw Materials in Lithic Technology and Settlement Patterns During the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

African Archaeological Review - The study of raw materials is an essential step in lithic analysis, regardless of the age, provenance, and technology of the assemblages. As in many other contexts...     

Pyrophyllite formation in the thermal aureole of a hydrothermal system in the Lower Saxony Basin,Germany

A combined clay mineralogical, fluid inclusion, and K‐Ar study of Upper Jurassic metasediments at the Gehn (Lower Saxony Basin, Germany) provides evidence for a transient hydrothermal event during Upper Cretaceous basin inversion centered on a prominent gravimetric anomaly. Kaolinite and smectite in Oxfordian pelitic parent rocks that cap a deltaic sandstone unit were locally transformed into pyrophyllite, 2M₁ illite, R3 illite–smectite, chlorite, and berthierine at the Ueffeln quarry. The pyrophyllite‐bearing metapelites lack bedding‐parallel preferred orientation of sheet silicates and experienced peak temperatures of about 260–270°C consistent with microthermometric data on quartz veins in the underlying silicified sandstones. The presence of expandable layers in illite–smectite and high Kübler Index values indicate that the thermal event was rather short‐lived. K‐Ar dating of the <0.2 μm fraction of the pyrophyllite‐bearing Ueffeln metapelite yields a maximum illitization age of 117 ± 2 Ma. Lower trapping temperatures of aqueous fluid inclusions in quartz veins and the absence of pyrophyllite in metapelites of the Frettberg quarry in a distance of about 2.5 km from the Ueffeln quarry infer maximum paleotemperatures of only 220°C. The highly localized thermal anomaly at Ueffeln suggests fault‐controlled fluid migration and heat transfer that provided a thermal aureole for pyrophyllite formation in the metapelites rather than metamorphism due to deep burial. A pH neutral hydrothermal fluid that formed by devolatilization reactions or less likely by mixing of meteoric and marine waters that interacted at depth with shales is indicated by the low salinity (3–5 wt. % NaCl equiv.) of aqueous inclusions, their coexistence with methane–carbon dioxide‐dominated gas inclusions as well as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen isotope data. The upwelling zone of hydrothermal fluids and the thermal maximum is centered on a gravimetric anomaly interpreted as an igneous intrusion (‘Bramsche Massif’) providing the heat source for the intrabasinal hydrothermal system.